This isn't love...

October has been recognized as the month where we address the ongoing challenges and constant battle to tackle the ugly issue of Domestic Violence.

    Luckily for me, I survived my bout with this terrible crime. I still have a voice to speak up about the abuse. I was 22 years old young and tender. I had my oldest son at the time who was only about 2 years old. I started dating this guy who was the total opposite of what I had been used to, so it was new, different, and against the grain.

     Not long after we started dating, I began finding out so many things about him, so much so that it had me concerned. I was so young, so naïve, so stupid. I didn't even have a clue about what was coming. I dropped out of college because he began accusing me of having a boyfriend at school, he didn't want me at Walmart because somebody that eh suspected I was supposedly dating was there too. I quickly realized that I wasn't the problem, it was him. He was insecure, he wasn't happy with himself, he had problems. Growing up he had (apparently from our conversations) been abused as a little boy, and both his mother and his dad had been on drugs most of his life and was never able to take care of him or his siblings. I felt bad for him, and because of that I stayed. Even though he was mean to me, he was hateful to me, he mistreated me, I thought that I loved him. He made me believe that everything that my family had taught me growing up was wrong. He said that it was a real world out here and everything wasn't great. He made me grow to hate myself, belittle myself, settle for low end paying jobs, and most importantly not further my education. Apparently somebody that he had dated before me was in college and when she finished she moved on with her life and left him...He didn't like that.

        The Abuse-

I remember he and I arguing and he came over to my apartment and pushed me over the couch and spit in my face. I'll never forget the words he told me. He told me that "You ain't shit, you ain't gonna ever be shit, all you got is p**&y, you need to use that to make a come up". Awful- I know right...

That was 12 years ago. Those words never died in me, they stuck with me, they grew on me, they stayed in my mind. I started to believe that I wasn't going to be anything. So I didn't try to do anything. I became bitter...I became enraged, and the worse part of it all, I hated men. I wanted to make someone else feel like he had made me feel. I hated him. I still do.

I was molested at 13, raped at 17, had my first son as a freshman in college at 19, in an abusive relationship at the age of 22 and on a wreck less path in life by the age of 24. I have been spat on, lied on, lied to, mistreated, talked about, hated on, abused, and most of all not loved.

        I knew that my family loved me...but I was looking for something that they couldn't do for me, which was find myself. Even through the terrible plights of my life, I know that God has always been by my side every step of the way. Even when I felt that I couldn't make it another day, even when I wanted to give up, or even when I was told no on several different occasions, God kept saying "YES". That yes, kept me going. It kept me striving to go further and overcome these situations that I've gone through. I have a sweet friend whose mother succumb to domestic violence about 5 years ago. I watched her cry, I grieved with her and for her, because I wondered what she was thinking and what she was going through on the night of that terrible ordeal. I still grieve for her and them, but I know that its over and she is happy. No more hurt, no more pain, no more being attacked.

I started my own domestic violence organization its called "Choose Life" You can find it on Facebook. Thanks!

"Just when the caterpillar thought that the world was over, it became a butterfly"